Synthetic polymer-derived single-network inks/bioinks for extrusion-based 3D printing towards bioapplications

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) printing, also known as the additive manufacturing technique has revolutionized the field of manufacturing with great impact as compared to the other traditional methods. This technique has shown a steep increase in popularity over the past decade due to its benchmark capabilities of fabricating new and complex 3D constructs, especially towards tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Among the currently applied 3D printing techniques, extrusion-based 3D printing has garnered particular attention for the employment of ink/bioink materials to enable on-demand personalized fabrication due to its low cost, broad utility for various materials, and ease of controlled printability. However, there is still a lack of diversity in the ink materials with their optimized degradation rate, rheology, and bioactivity for precisely fabricating complex and self-supported cell-laden 3D printed constructs. Therefore, the development of an array of such new materials is a major challenge for synthetic polymer chemists, material scientists and biomedical researchers for widening the future applicability of 3D (bio)printing. This review aims to summarize the recent advances in the rational design and development of ink/bioink materials based on synthetic polymers as single network precursors due to their great opportunity to tune their physicochemical and mechanical properties in order to design and mimic in-human 3D tissue scaffolds with shape retention for both hard and soft tissues.